Swedish touch screen pioneer raises €20m

Swedish developer of large multi-touch screen technology FlatFrog Laboratories has raised €20million in a funding round led by new investor Intel Capital.

FlatFrog intends to use the funds to expand its team this year to accelerate the development and commercialization of its 32in multi-touch screen that started shipping earlier this year.

“Since we began developing our unique multi-touch technology more than five years ago, our goal has been to bring supreme multi-touch technologies to the mass market by providing flawless user experiences at affordable prices”, said Christer Fåhraeus, CEO, Chairman and Founder at FlatFrog. “At the right price-points and with the right technology, we believe every screen in the world will be touch-enabled. This new investment round, and the collaboration opportunities created by teaming with Intel Capital, will allow us to run even faster to reach our goal.”

By using sophisticated algorithms to track light travelling inside the cover glass of a screen, FlatFrog’s Planar Scatter Detection technology provides instant and perfect detection of up to hundreds of simultaneous touches and drags. FlatFrog’s PSD technology is based on optics instead of the traditional capacitive electronic fields used in the vast majority of today’s high-end touch-enabled mobile devices. As a result, touch screens based on PSD detect not only input from bare fingers, but also from gloved fingers, passive styli and many other common objects such as pencil erasers.

“Creating a perfect touch experience at very low price-points, in a way that is easy to manufacture and that can scale from small to very large sizes, is extremely complicated”, said Fåhraeus. “We literally have had top scientists working for years on our algorithms, opto-electronics and opto-mechanics. This new financing round will take us to a new level.”

Flatfrog was founded in 2007 by serial entrepreneurs Ola Wassvik and Fåhraeus. The company holds more than 60 patent families in optical wave-guide touch technology. Intel joins the existing investors, international financial investor Invus and founding investor Sunstone Capital